Mumbai: A months-long build-up of a “divisive Hindu-Muslim binary” fanned by powerful politicians and Hindu nationalist figures followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) sectarian, hate speech-filled campaign for the Delhi Assembly election created a volatile tinderbox eventually leading to the February 2020 communal clashes in New Delhi, according to a fact-finding committee chaired by former Supreme Court judge Madan B Lokur.
Calling the BJP’s rhetoric in the run-up to and after the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in December 2019 “divisive and inflammatory”, the panel’s report, called ‘Uncertain Justice’ and released on 8 October, said the ruling party’s framing of the National Register Of Citizens (NRC) as a step towards identifying and expelling ‘infiltrators’ from the country sparked fears in the Muslim community about loss of citizenship.
Allegations of police complicity in allowing or participating in the targeting of Muslims and their establishments was another facet of the violence, the report said.
Even as anti-CAA demonstrations in the capital faced police action, pro-CAA demonstrations emerged, “calling for shooting bullets while branding anti-CAA protesters as ‘traitors’, ‘terrorists’, ‘rioters, and ‘jihadis’,” the report said, holding speeches by politicians, Hindu nationalists and the BJP’s election campaigners responsible for growing communal tensions in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of violence in the North-East Delhi district,
“… the February violence emerged as the ultimate culmination of a larger communally divisive project that was set in motion before the eruption of violence…” the report said. “Once it broke out, while the violence was perpetrated through the mechanics of mob involvement on both sides, Muslim identity was singled out as a target to be attacked.”
The report was written by five members of a citizens’ committee formed in October 2020 upon the invitation of the Constitutional Conduct Group (a non-partisan and politically unaffiliated group of retired public officials working to promote Constitutional principles) to conduct an independent inquiry into the riots. The panel studied the events running up to the violence; assessed the response of state and police machinery in tackling the violence; investigated the riots and relief measures for those affected by the violence; and examined the role of mainstream and social media during, before and after the riots.
A sixth member of the committee, retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Meeran Chadha Borwankar, a former director general of police (DGP), withdrew from the committee in the final stages and wrote a dissent note that was published in the report with a response from the other committee members.
In addition to Justice Lokur, the panel comprised former chief justice of the Madras and Delhi high courts A P Shah, former Delhi high court judge R S Sodhi, former Patna high court judge Anjana Prakash and retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer G K Pillai.
The committee’s report, based on extensive scrutiny of primary material including first information reports (FIRs), chargesheets, court orders, audio-visual clips and media reports, and after hearing fresh testimonies of affected persons, lawyers, activists, journalists and public intellectuals, also studied previous investigations’ findings on state and institutional failures in response to the anti-CAA protests, including a report by global non-profit Human Rights Watch), an investigative briefing by Amnesty International and a fact-finding report by the Delhi Minorities Commission.
The panel members were left with little doubt, they wrote, that “relations between Hindus and Muslims stand altered”, and that the 2020 riots would have long-term consequences on Muslims’ agency to express themselves politically or otherwise, an impact that would be felt not just in the North East Delhi district, but on the “psyche of the Indian Muslim” across the country.
CAA Used To Polarise, Incite
Mid-December of 2019, as north-east Delhi emerged as an epicentre of sit-in demonstrations against the CAA, the BJP’s poll campaign labelled anti-CAA protestors as anti-nationals and traitors.
“Calls for violence against the so-called ‘traitors’, in the form of the ‘goli maaro’ (shoot the traitors) slogans, were casually repeated, with no censure,” the report said.
The hate speech, amplified by TV news and social media, and open calls for violence enabled a fraught atmosphere in which individuals became receptive to incitement. “The microcosm of an engineered anti-Muslim narrative leading to the violence signals the growing fusion of hate messaging in public discourse with the actual incidence of violence,” the report said.
When mob violence from both sides broke out, anti-CAA protest sites such as those in Chand Bagh, Kardampuri, Jaffrabad, Mustafabad and Khajuri Khas, all in north-east Delhi, were specifically targeted, suggesting an “effort to rein in the anti-CAA sentiment in the course of the violence”.
Hate Speech In BJP’s Poll Campaign
Listing several instances of hate speech by BJP leaders and candidates during campaigning for the Delhi Assembly election held on 8 February 2020, the report said the election commission’s (EC’s) response was neither uniform across cases nor effective in putting an end to the series of provocative speeches from top leaders, including some that openly called for violence.
The EC issued gag orders against some leaders, holding that the language of their speeches was objectionable and could incite hatred between religious communities, but failed to initiate criminal prosecution in a single case.
On 31 December 2019, the BJP’s Anupam Pandey called anti-CAA protesters “deshdrohis” (traitors) at an election rally.
On 23 January 2020, the BJP’s Kapil Mishra tweeted that the 8 February contest in Delhi would be an India-Pakistan face-off. “Delhi mein chhote chhote Pakistan bane. (Small Pakistans have come up in Delhi),” he tweeted. Holding the tweets objectionable, on 25 January, the EC directed that Mishra be barred from public meetings, processions, rallies, roadshows, interviews and utterances to the media for 48 hours.
Days later, union minister Anurag Thakur raised the slogan ‘Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko’ (Shoot the traitors of the country) on 27 January, at an election rally in Rithala, in north-west Delhi. On 29 January, the EC ordered Thakur’s removal as a BJP star campaigner and, on 30 January, barred him from holding any public meetings, public processions, rallies, roadshows, interviews and utterances to the media for 72 hours.
This story was originally published in article-14.com . Read the full story here